Seeing the library from a student perspective
For most freshmen students, the high school library is the largest library they've ever used, and for almost all of them the organization of the library, with its myriad of online and print resources, is daunting. Furthermore, students new to high school have little idea how to find, choose, and use sources. Among the problems freshmen face are these:
little previous exposure to scholarly writing; little understanding of the difference between magazines and scholarly journals; little experience with print periodicals at all.
little experience with reference books and no experience with specialized references such as the Encyclopedia of Religion; far too much experience, however, with Wikipedia.
little experience reading documented writing (and typically none in tracking down cited sources)
little or no familiarity with the Dewey Classification System used by most school libraries. (For example, students may assume that, since there is no fiction section, we don't have any fiction.)
difficulty choosing and reformulating good search terms for topics that are unfamiliar.
difficulty selecting their best hits from results of a search.
difficulty skimming a source to decide if it will be useful or not (and a common misperception that using a book requires reading the whole thing).
lack of familiarity with basic resources; that scholarly books have tables of contents and indexes that are clues to what is inside, that scholarly journal articles typically have an abstract (summary), that articles appear in issues of magazines and journals in chronological order (since often they have only printed full-text articles from the computer).
unwillingness to invest time in learning a new approach to research when they are certain they will find something on the Web.
no idea what kinds of questions they might ask a librarian.
little inclination to explore the physical library on their own.
that everyone else knows how it works - and admitting they don't is too embarrassing to contemplate.
Students tend to do the following things.
They often begin their research on Google. A major survey conducted in 2005 found only 2% of college students begin their research using resources on the college library's Website.
Within Google, they tend to look at the first results, rarely going beyond the first page.
They are likely to find a Wikipedia article among the first results; they often consider this an acceptable source to cite in their papers.
If they use a library database, they are most likely to use Academic Search Premier (a general database containing both scholarly and popular articles in all disciplines, much of it in full text) rather than a subject-specific database.
They tend to return to whatever database worked before, whether or not it's appropriate.
They are reluctant to persevere if searches don't immediately yield "perfect" results - and are much more likely to change topics rather than change search strategies.
They have a great deal of difficulty locating books on the library shelves.
Many are nervous about approaching the reference desk (the "chair of shame") and using interlibrary loan.
They are very confident about their ability to do research online.
Their professors are the most important source of advice about which sources to use. Other students are more likely to be viewed as valuable informants about sources than librarians are.
What we can do
The library faculty work with faculty in the disciplines to overcome these obstacles. We are happy to collaborate in any manner that works for you. Among the things we've tried are--
Consulting in advance about resources for an assignment you're considering
Conducting a workshop in the electronic classroom for a lab session tailored to your students' assignment, with a follow-up work session as their research progresses; we're more than happy to meet with your class more than once
Meeting with groups or individual students by appointment to work on their projects
Working with students on their projects at the reference desk. Some faculty assign students the task of having a preliminary bibliography examined by a librarian at the desk or come up with and report on three questions related to their project. These assignments, while seeming a bit forced, have been very successful. Students learn what they need to learn when they're ready.
Designing effective assignments with the novice researcher in mind Students are fully capable of developing a sense of how scholarly research is reported and how to construct a good research project. However, undergraduates must spend far more time than experts in gaining enough background knowledge to find a focus for a research project. They also have understandable difficulty assessing the value of different sources, not being familiar with the field and its major publications.
Don't assume students learned how to use the library in the FTS. What they learned was limited, may have been forgotten, or may not take into account recent changes in the library.
Students tell us they learn by doing and they learn from the models provided by their professors. The most important predictor of students' success in finding, reading, and using sources is the number of times they engage in those activities.
If you'd like one of the librarians to take an advance look at one of your assignments to ensure we have the resources called for, please feel free to contact your department liaison or a librarian of your choice. Following discussions with First Term Seminar faculty, we have the following specific ideas for tackling common areas of confusion.
How can I get students familiar with the process of finding books and articles?
A single library session that "covers" how to do this by lecture and demonstration is not very effective. Students don't find it worth learning until and unless they have a genuine and urgent need to learn the ropes. Consider assigning a simple exercise for them to attempt on their own; then bring the class in to work on research for a project that requires using library resources once they have developed real questions. Feel free to bring them back again when they've drafted a research project and have new and even more specific questions. This is actually a good way to model the recursiveness of good, honest research.
How can I encourage students to use the librarians as a resource?
There are two good reasons students hestitate to approach the reference desk. First, they are embarrassed to be seen asking for help. Second, they aren't familiar with what kinds of questions they could ask. You might find it useful to force the issue by having students construct questions for the librarian once they've done some research - or by requiring them to have a librarian look over and sign off on a preliminary bibliography.
How can I make clear to them the difference between scholarly and popular publications?
This is a difficult distinction for students. Consider giving them the opportunity to look at different coverage of the same issue. Or have them examine entire issues of a print magazine and a print journal and compare them. Follow up with a discussion of how to make these distinctions with database results.
How can I help them understand the differences between primary, secondary, and tertiary sources?
One interesting exercise is to have a class look at a primary source related to your course together and generate questions about it. Those can then be researched in reference books and other secondary sources. Or have students start with a major scientific concept covered in a textbook and then track down a biography or memoir of the scientist who made the breakthrough and one of his or her original papers.
My students often think there are two kinds of books: textbooks and stories (or novels). How can I help them understand the various kinds of books and their uses?
We would be happy to pull together examples of various kinds of books that approach the same topic with an exercise that asks students to make comparisons about their differences. Another approach would be to give them a call number area and ask them to describe in some depth three or four books using an exercise that guides them to look closely and critically at them while recording the elements they need to include in a bibliography.
How can I encourage students to find and use reference materials?
Specialized reference works such as the Encyclopedia of Religion or the Encyclopedia of Applied Ethics can provide excellent and accessible overviews of complex topics without dumbing them down. The librarians would be happy to help locate sample articles from reference books that would be useful readings for your class or help design exercises that will introduce them to the reference section.
How can I help students get familiar with the spatial layout of the library (as well as the resources on the library's Website)?
Try a collaborative tour - asking students to explore and share what they discovered. Or ask groups to explore and report on different parts of the library's Website for one another, challenging each team to discover something nobody else has uncovered yet.
How can I help students learn about documentation and plagiarism?
One of the problems students have with scholarly forms of documentation is that they rarely understand its rhetorical power. They think of documentation defensively, to prevent being charged with theft - as opposed to thinking of sources as expert witnesses brought in to lend support to an argument. One approach to avoid plagiarism is to create plagiarism-proof assignments. Another is to engage students in using references in their research. The practice will make more sense once they've learned to read other's references as an effective research strategy.
Doug Brent, "Using an Academic Content Seminar to Engage Students with the Culture of Academic Research." Journal of the First Year Experience and Students in Transition 18(1) 2006: 23-54. (a draft is available here under "Papers on Rhetoric and Composition Studies"
Exercises
Listed here are some downloadable Word documents that can be adapted for use in your classes. Feel free to combine exercises or harvest just the parts you want to use. If you would like to consult with a librarian about these or about other ideas you've had, let us know. These have not been tested, so any feedback you might have would be very valuable.
Collaborative library tour - have students explore parts of the library and report out as the class tours the library together. It might be wise to include a librarian on the day of the tour to clarify any confusion or answer questions that might arise. You may want to provide students with a floor plan.
Finding biographical information - using reference books and books in the general collection (so only workable for biographical subjects who are likely to have books written about them).
Tracing cited works - combines an introduction to the reference section with the nuts-and-bolts of finding out which ones are available in our library. (Note: this is more complex than you might think and may induce a certain level of frustration.)
Scholarly v. popular - a different approach using the print periodicals collection to compare three publications.
Evaluating Web Pages - asks students to compare three Web pages, compare them to a peer-reviewed article on the same topic, and compose a citation. Note that when citing Web pages, there may be more than one "correct" citation, so this could be an opporunity to discuss the purpose of documentation - to provide enough information for your reader to decide whether to track down the source.
Reference librarian interview - a form that gently forces students to overcome their anxiety about the "chair of shame" and learn a thing or two in the process.
Writing documented prose and plagiarism
Students have little experience reading or writing documented prose. They often view documentation as a meaningless chore and don't recognize its rhetorical power. On top of that, some students take shortcuts that are simply not acceptable. Be sure to encourage your students to use the excellent assitance provided at our Writing Center; they may also ask for help citing sources at the reference desk, where we keep copies of the major style manuals. Resources
Using the Library in Your Courses - and How Librarians Can Help
Seeing the library from a student perspective
For most freshmen students, the high school library is the largest library they've ever used, and for almost all of them the organization of the library, with its myriad of online and print resources, is daunting. Furthermore, students new to high school have little idea how to find, choose, and use sources. Among the problems freshmen face are these:
Students tend to do the following things.
What we can do
The library faculty work with faculty in the disciplines to overcome these obstacles. We are happy to collaborate in any manner that works for you. Among the things we've tried are--
Designing effective assignments with the novice researcher in mind
Students are fully capable of developing a sense of how scholarly research is reported and how to construct a good research project. However, undergraduates must spend far more time than experts in gaining enough background knowledge to
find a focus for a research project. They also have understandable difficulty assessing the value of different sources, not being familiar with the field and its major publications.
Don't assume students learned how to use the library in the FTS. What they learned was limited, may have been forgotten, or may not take into account recent changes in the library.
Students tell us they learn by doing and they learn from the models provided by their professors. The most important predictor of students' success in finding, reading, and using sources is the number of times they engage in those activities.
If you'd like one of the librarians to take an advance look at one of your assignments to ensure we have the resources called for, please feel free to contact your department liaison or a librarian of your choice.
Following discussions with First Term Seminar faculty, we have the following specific ideas for tackling common areas of confusion.
Exercises
Listed here are some downloadable Word documents that can be adapted for use in your classes. Feel free to combine exercises or harvest just the parts you want to use. If you would like to consult with a librarian about these or about other ideas you've had, let us know. These have not been tested, so any feedback you might have would be very valuable.
Writing documented prose and plagiarism
Students have little experience reading or writing documented prose. They often view documentation as a meaningless chore and don't recognize its rhetorical power. On top of that, some students take shortcuts that are simply not acceptable. Be sure to encourage your students to use the excellent assitance provided at our Writing Center; they may also ask for help citing sources at the reference desk, where we keep copies of the major style manuals.
Resources
- Avoiding Plagiarism - from the Purdue University Online Writing Center
- Citing Your Sources from Gustavus librarians
- Defining and Avoiding Plagiarism: The WPA Statement on Best Practices
Feel free to contact Barbara Fister or your department liaison to talk further.To see if one our labs is available, view the library's instruction calendar.